


come sit at our feast

by profdanglais



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Captain Swan Halloweek 2019 (Once Upon a Time), Captain Swan Role Reversal Halloweek 2019 (Once Upon a Time), F/M, Halloween, Monster mash, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-13 07:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21240221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profdanglais/pseuds/profdanglais
Summary: “…for we all have stripes, and we all have horns, we all have scales, tails, manes, claws and thornsand here in the dark is where new worlds are born…”It’s Halloween, when all the weird and wondrous beasts of the world creep out of the shadows and throw themselves onehellof a party.For Emma Swan and Killian Jones, witch and shapeshifter respectively, it’s a chance to kick back, get high, and watch the mayhem unfold…





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To accompany a brilliant piece of art from @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713 for the @csrolereversal (which can be found on Tumblr), and also I think suiting today’s @cshalloweek theme of Fright Night, we have witch!Emma and shapeshifter!Killian, and a Halloween party that’s literally out of this world.

Of course we’ve all heard the stories. Centuries of them, handed down, tales of things that belong to the darkness and the eerie edges of this world. Tales of ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. Of witches and goblins and banshees and djinn, of wendigo and yaoguai, mokèlé mbèmbé and yara-ma-yha-who. They come from every culture and in every land we tell of them. We sing them in verse and scribe them in books, we paint them and carve them and we hide behind our hands in darkened rooms when they leap out from nowhere on our TV screens and we _scream_ with all the breath in our lungs though we’ll later swear we knew it was coming.

We love the stories. We love to be spooked, scared even, love the pounding rush of adrenaline through our veins, our hearts racing, terrified yet always safe, knowing that it’s not real, not _really_.

Except when it is.

—

She’d put the scarecrow on her lawn. That was the first thing he noticed. Smelt it, actually—pine resin and straw and sweet decay wafting down the darkening streets from at least three blocks away. The scarecrow was on her lawn and there were pumpkins in her windows that had faces.

He paused just outside the gate, a large black dog with chalcedony eyes, one with the shadows until he chose to emerge from them, always felt but rarely seen. At least, not by most.

“This is your fault,” said the scarecrow, in a voice raspy with disuse. Its dead-eyed face turned stiffly on its neck and glared at him with all the feeble power of its clumsy features. Its ratty top hat teetered on its cloth head. “_You_ told her to ‘lean into it.’”

Brightly coloured leaves adorned the porch and candles lit the way along the path that led to it. The gate swung on creaky hinges in the chill breeze. It seemed she had ‘leaned into it’ with a vengeance.

He cocked his head at the scarecrow with the closest thing to a shrug a dog can manage then trotted through the gate and along the candlelit path, ignoring the hollow glare of the eyes that followed him as the scarecrow spun on its wooden stake. If Jefferson didn’t wish to be displayed on her lawn like wares in a secondhand shop then he shouldn’t have messed with her.

Everyone knows you don’t mess with a witch.

She stood in her doorway, framed by the flickering glow of firelight, holding a besom broomstick and wearing a black and pointy hat at a jaunty angle on her head. He wished he could roll his eyes. Perhaps she had leaned in a bit too far after all.

The trio of small girls standing bravely on the porch seemed suitably impressed. The tallest of the three, dressed as Captain America, held out her candy bag with arms that barely shook and the small princess at her side, after a nudge of encouragement, did the same. The smallest girl, almost lost in her dinosaur costume, was too interested in the dog presently absorbing light at the top of the steps to care much about candy.

“Hi,” she said, her brown eyes wide with wonder. He adopted his friendliest expression and let his tongue loll from the corner of his mouth. She giggled.

The tongue loll gets them every time.

He allowed the dinosaur to pet his ears and gave her hand a sloppy lick that had her giggling again. Captain America observed the exchange through narrowed eyes.

“Is that your dog, miss?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s definitely _mine_,” replied the woman in the doorway, smiling with just a few too many teeth. “He showed up as a stray a few years ago and he’s just so cute I had to keep him.”

He huffed a deep, indignant bark. {_Stray indeed_.}

The woman smirked at him and Captain America stumbled back, grabbing the startled princess by the sleeve of her dress and pulling her down the porch steps, but the dinosaur was unfazed. “My sister doesn’t like dogs,” she informed him in a quiet voice. “But I love them.” She leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “You have really pretty eyes. Like the sky.” 

“Eva, come _on_,” called Captain America, who was by then halfway down the path, clutching her candy bag tightly in one hand and the princess’s sleeve in the other. “Let’s get _out_ of here.”

The dinosaur kissed his head. “Bye, puppy,” she said, and ran after her sisters.

He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called him “puppy.”

The woman was leaning against the doorjamb, watching the proceedings with great amusement. “I see you’ve made a new friend.”

_{What can I say, love? Women adore me, even the extinct reptilian ones.}_

She laughed. “Well, you’d better come in before any triceratops show up. You know what _they’re_ like.” She set her bowl of candy down on a chair next to the door, and with a wave of her hand produced a sign that read “Take one, if you dare.”

“I don’t think many more trick or treaters will show up but just in case,” she said, closing the door behind them and locking it with a flick of her wrist.

_{And what if they take more than one?} _

“They won’t.” She flashed him that slightly-too-toothy grin. “At least not if they know what’s good for them. Catching sight of her reflection in the hallway mirror she frowned and snapped her fingers. Her casual jeans and sweater, the loose ponytail and the absurd pointy hat disappeared, replaced by a dress that hugged her slender form, short and strapless and blood red. Riotous curls tumbled over her shoulders and down her back, and her eyes were smoky black. She smoothed the dress over her hips with a satisfied nod, then turned to him. “Are you going to go like that?”

Spears of bright white light rose from the ground, whirling in a dizzying spiral around him, and when they spun away the dog was a man, with hair as black as his fur and the same blue eyes. “You prefer me like this, then, love?”

“I do,” she purred, pulling him towards her by the collar of his leather jacket and into a kiss that fired his blood. He grabbed her hips to draw her closer, backing her against the wall and plundering her mouth. It was far too long since he tasted her, that rich, dark flavour headier than the finest rum. She nipped at his lips with enough force to sting, challenge glinting in her eyes. With a hungry growl he fisted his hand in her hair, tugging her head back to return the favour with his teeth on her neck. 

“You know, we don’t have to go,” he murmured against her skin. “We could stay here.”

“We could,” she gasped, in a breathless voice that made him _ache._ “Or we could go, get high as a pair of kites then come back here and fuck until sunrise.”

He ground himself against her, chuckling at her helpless moan, then stepped back with a smirk. “As you wish, my love. Lead the way.” 

\-- 

For anyone interested, the full text of the amazing poem quoted in the summary:   
  
If you are a monster, stand up.  
If you are a monster, a trickster, a fiend,  
If you’ve built a steam-powered wishing machine  
If you have a secret, a dark past, a scheme,  
If you kidnap maidens or dabble in dreams  
Come stand by me.  
  
If you have been broken, stand up.  
If you have been broken, abandoned, alone  
If you have been starving, a creature of bone  
If you live in a tower, a dungeon, a throne  
If you weep for wanting, to be held, to be known,  
Come stand by me.  
  
If you are a savage, stand up.  
If you are a witch, a dark queen, a black knight,  
If you are a mummer, a pixie, a sprite,  
If you are a pirate, a tomcat, a wright,  
If you swear by the moon and you fight the hard fight,  
Come stand by me.   
  
If you are a devil, stand up.  
If you are a villain, a madman, a beast,  
If you are a strowler, a prowler, a priest,  
If you are a dragon come sit at our feast,  
For we all have stripes, and we all have horns,   
We all have scales, tails, manes, claws and thorns  
And here in the dark is where new worlds are born.  
Come stand by me.

― Catherynne M. Valente


	2. Chapter 2

Moonlight slanted through misty trees as they slipped through the back door of her house and into a forest imperceptible to human eyes. He shifted back to dog form and walked beside her, pressing himself firmly against her leg, his every sense alert. He disliked this forest—or rather what the forest contained—and all her mocking laughter and quoting of Terry Pratchett made no difference. Even scary things are scared of things.

The forest was dark despite the moonlight, despite the eerie glow of the mist itself, the twisty trees hung with moss and creeping vines and inhabited by other creeping things of a different nature. The mist grew denser and its glow began to pulse as they neared their destination: an ancient, gnarled oak tree with a knothole in its trunk that oozed with a sickly light.

She gestured with her hand and the knothole began to split, widening, brightening, slashing reality as it grew and grew, the ragged edges of their world curling back in outraged horror, recoiling from the impossible gash in the fabric of everything that was. Her other hand rested on his neck, fingers curling into his thick fur as they stepped through this crack in the worlds and into nowhere.

“Emma, Killian! How good of you to join us!” said a haughty voice.

The blinding brightness of the portal dimmed as it closed behind them. As their eyes adjusted to the lower light the shadowy figure belonging to the voice resolved into an elegant, black-clad woman with a menacing glint in her eye and a wide smile revealing the most even teeth Emma had ever seen, framed by two very, very sharp fangs.

“Regina.” Emma’s lip curled and Killian shifted, draping an arm around his wife’s shoulders, his face fixed in a sneer. “Why do the vampires always act like they’re in charge of these shindigs?”

Regina patted her cheek condescendingly. “When you’re nine hundred years old, you can play host,” she said. “Until then mind your place, witch.”

Emma hissed and Killian’s arm tightened around her shoulders, urging her away before she could start a fight with Regina. Again. “Now, love, remember last year,” he soothed. “You can’t keep hexing the vampires, it just annoys them. Let’s go talk to the were-creatures, instead, shall we? I see Robin over by the punch bowl and I’ve just recalled he owes me money.”

He steered Emma towards a long table formed of slender, twisted tree trunks and loaded with platters of meats and cheeses and loaves of bread, cakes and cookies and odd-looking fruits, bowls full of steaming hot liquids and ones whose vapours came from ice instead. It sat in the middle of a clearing in a forest exactly like the one they had just left, and also most decidedly _unlike_ it. The angle of the sky was not quite right, nor the way the light fell, nor the mountains that rose above the treetops in one distance while the sound of waves pounding on a rocky shore came from another. Music flowed throughout, as though the air itself were singing, and creatures of all shapes and sizes—horned and furred and scaled, some with limbs and others with wings and still others with no body at all—mixed and mingled in time to its tune.

Next to the table stood the were-fox with his sharp ears and cunning eyes, chatting to a man whose beard and hair were formed of lush green leaves, framing a face that appeared hewn from the trunk of a tree. Each held a flagon of beer that, though they both were drinking deeply, was never less than full. Wherever the Green Man went, things were endlessly renewed… whether you wished them to be or not.

“Well met Robin, August, how are things?” asked Killian, taking two empty flagons from the table. As he handed one to Emma both began to fill with beer. Emma’s stopped just as the liquid reached the edge of the rim, but Killian’s surged up in a wave, overflowing onto his arm and down the front of his jeans.

“Oi!” he cried, setting the flagon down and shaking droplets of beer from his hand. “Watch what you’re doing, mate!”

August gave him a look that was strangely stony for a man with a wooden face. “Payback for last Halloween,” he said coolly. “You know what you did.”

Killian brushed futilely at his drenched jeans. “You’re a tree, mate. I’m a dog. Drink was taken. It was all but inevitable.”

“I’m not a tree,” snapped August, “and it better not happen again.”

“You’ve got leaves growing out of your head,” interjected Robin, who was watching the scene unfold with unbridled glee. “You’re made of wood. How exactly are you not a tree?”

“That’s _precisely_ my point—”

“That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of—”

Emma rolled her eyes and waved her hand over Killian’s jeans to dry them, kissing his cheek as she did. He turned to her with a grin and a nod of understanding, then dove back into the argument.

She slipped away, disappearing into the throng before Robin’s band of merry were-creatures could catch sight of her and rope her into another drinking game that would end, as they inevitably did, with arrows lodged in places where no arrow should ever be. Will Scarlet was a menace with his bow and this lesson at least Emma had managed to learn from Halloween parties past.

She avoided the vampires though her fingers itched with hexing magic, and made her way towards a mournful ghost she could just see through the milling crowd, hovering atop a tree stump, pale and translucent in her white gown, with long hair loose and flowing down her shoulders to frame the oozing stab wound in her heart. Tears flowed gently and unheeded down her cheeks as she attempted to show her book of poetry to another white-clad brunette, this one with a pretty face and a sweet smile just beginning to strain at the edges. Emma stopped short as she spotted the danger, wondering if there was still time to intervene. If Belle didn’t shut up soon, Aurora was going to… _oh no_… no, it was too late. Aurora’s smile crumbled away, caving into her face as her mouth fell open in a cavernous _O_, stretching her countenance, lengthening it, her eyes sinking deep into her skull and gaping wide and black and empty.

Emma quickly performed a sound-dampening spell around her head, fixing it in place just as the bloodcurdling shriek began. Aurora’s wail rent the night and the eardrums as she rose into the air, white gown flapping madly as she swooped through the clearing. Creatures ducked and leapt to avoid her, food and drink flying every which way as they clapped their hands over their aching ears. To no avail. The cry pierced their skulls and echoed in their bones and for a single terrifying moment tempted them to madness.

And then, with a final wrenching howl that shook the treetops, Aurora whirled off into the darkness.

The silence that fell in her wake was hollow and tremulous. Slowly, cautiously, everyone began to rise and dust themselves off, blinking and shaking their heads to quell the ringing in their ears. The music flowed again, cautiously at first, and Emma tapped her temple to dissolve her spell.

“I suppose there’s no way her invitation could be lost in the mail next year.” drawled a familiar voice behind her.

“That would be unnecessarily cruel, don’t you think?” she replied, turning to address a tall, sharply dressed woman. “Aurora looks forward to these things more than anyone. I suppose banshees don’t get much company.”

The woman smirked and her hair writhed, hissing. “She’d want to try living in a cave. The sad fact is that none of us gets much company, darling. Except perhaps you. Tell me, how _is_ that delectable husband of yours?”

“Still delectable.” Emma’s eyes sharpened as the woman’s lips curled in a predatory smile. “Still under my protection,” she added.

“Darling, you surely don’t think that I—”

“There’s almost nothing I’d put past you, Zelena. And I prefer when only one part of Killian is rock hard, thank you very much.”

“Oh?” Zelena’s eyebrow rose over the frame of her mirrored sunglasses. Her hair slithered up, beady eyes focused on Emma, forked tongues flicking. “And which part would that be?”

Emma laughed and shook her head. She never could manage to out-brazen Zelena.

Just then they heard the drumming sound of hoofbeats in the distance, dozens of them, advancing on the gathering but from which direction it was impossible to tell.

“Bloody hell,” snapped Zelena, spinning about and peering into the shadowy depths of the forest beyond, her hair thickening, lengthening, hissing furiously as beside her Emma began to glow with magic. “Must they do this every ye—” She was cut off as the horsemen burst through the trees, careening through the clearing at a full gallop, small men on huge black horses with hooves like knives, waving spears and swords and howling fit to raise the dead.

Which was exactly the point.

This time the creatures were more or less prepared, the Wild Hunt unlike the banshee being an expected if irritating yearly occurrence. With her senses heightened by the magic flowing through her Emma was aware of all the forces gathering: Elsa brandishing her ice-shard sword and Tink’s demented giggle as she pulled razor-sharp throwing daggers from the empty air; Killian shifting and falling back on his haunches, coiled to spring with teeth bared and hackles raised; Robin notching a vicious looking arrow in his bow, his were-creatures similarly armed and primed for battle at his flank.

Emma herself raised a shield of shimmering magic just in time to deflect the enormous pickaxe that came flying straight at her head.

“Damn it, Leroy!” she shouted, whipping away the shield so she could shoot a burst of light at the manically grinning dwarf. He dodged it easily and spun about to make a second pass at her, axe raised high, eyes wide and bloodshot red, full of furious insanity. She strengthened her shield just in time as Leroy swung his axe down, striking it with such a force that sparks of magic went flying, sizzling into the night. Emma thrust a burst of energy through the shield that knocked him back into his saddle, and before he could rear up for another swing an arrow struck him in the shoulder and he nearly dropped his axe.

“What the—” His eyes narrowed in fury. _“You!_”

“Don’t even think about it, dwarf,” sneered a petite brunette with hair tangled and wild about her shoulders and an arrow trained at Leroy’s head. She sat atop a centaur, Emma was amused to note, a gorgeous palomino with a flowing blonde tail and a much better haircut than when she’d seen him last. It seemed things were really progressing between Snow and David.

Leroy howled in frustration, waving his axe wildly between Emma and Snow. “One of these days, sister!” he shouted. “And you— other sister! One of these days I’m gonna catch you both off your guard!”

“ENOUGH.” Regina’s voice boomed through the clearing and everyone fell silent, all eyes trained on the haughty vampire. “You’ve had your fun, dwarves, but you know the party rules,” she snapped. “No battle steeds, and try to keep the murdering to a minimum. Now get those damned horses out of here.”

With a snarl and a flourish of his axe, Leroy spun his horse around. “I’ll be back, sisters!” he cried, and galloped off.

“Don’t forget the ale!” Snow called after him.

Emma released her magic and rolled the tension from her shoulders. The Wild Hunt was decidedly _not _her favourite Halloween tradition. But the dwarves insisted, and the special ale they brought when they joined the party properly did make up for a lot.

She turned to her friends with a wide grin and a somewhat successful attempt to imitate Killian’s eyebrow waggle. “Well well,” she said, “Horseback riding, eh?”

David flushed red as Snow slid from his back and gave his flank an energetic pat. “It’s not what it looks like,” he mumbled, but Snow returned Emma’s wicked grin.

“I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what it looks like,” she said. “And I’m here to tell you that everything you’ve heard about horses is true. _Everything._”

“I’m not a horse,” David protested weakly.

“Key parts of you are,” smirked Snow.

“Ugh, guys, please, keep it in the barn,” Emma protested.

“That’s inappropriate, Emma,” said Snow primly, as though she hadn’t just been making some seriously bawdy innuendoes. “And a bit species-ist. _I_ don’t make jokes about Killian and doghouses.”

“Well, you _do_—”

David cleared his throat. “Speaking of Killian—” He looked pleadingly at Emma.

“Over by the table with Robin and August, last I saw him.”

David scanned the clearing. “Ah, yeah, there they are. Um, ladies if you’ll excuse me.” He cantered away, clearly trying not to gallop.

“So,” said Emma. “_Really?_”

Snow shrugged. “Love is love. The heart wants what the heart wants, Emma.”

“And your heart wants a centaur?”

“Says the woman married to a dog!”

“He’s not a dog _all_ the time.”

“He still licks your face.” Snow’s eyes glinted with an odd light. “And other parts of you I’ll bet.”

Indeed he did. Emma smiled as a particularly fond memory sprang to her mind. “Yeah, well I might not mind that.”

A wave of heat surged around them, accompanied by a whiff of arcane magic. The smile fell from Emma’s face, replaced with a suspicious frown. She glanced at her friend. Snow’s cheeks were bright pink and her eyes looked feverish.

“And I,” she crowed, “might not mind David’s hu—”

“Shhh!” Emma put a hand on Snow’s arm. The odd heat had begun to prickle under her skin and insistent, lascivious urges were rising up in her. Urges to tell Snow everything about her sex life, all the intimate details of the passion that burned so hot between her and Killian, all the ways they liked to tease and pleasure each other. Then to find Killian himself and do all his favourite things to him until he was desperate and begging for her. No matter if everyone was watching.

_Especially_ _if everyone’s watching_. 

Emma sighed. The woman was _not_ subtle. “I know you’re there,” she said, not bothering to disguise her exasperation. “You can come out now.”

A shadow shifted at the edge of the clearing and a woman sauntered into view. Tall and slender and dressed in skintight black, with fishnet stockings and impossible heels, her long dark hair streaked with crimson. “Aww,” she pouted, lips full and glossy red. “Just as it was getting good!”

“_Ru_by! Are you kidding me? Did you…” Snow waved her hand. “_Influence_ us?”

“Well, naturally.”

“I can’t believe you would do that!”

“It is literally the purpose of my existence, Snow.”

“But we’re your friends!”

“Which just makes me more curious about what you’re up to! If you would call once in a while—”

“I live in the damn mountains!”

Ruby’s reply was drowned out by the music as it began to swell, right on schedule. The Wild Hunt had ridden and all formalities had been observed. Now the party could _really_ start. 

The music rose up loud and heavy, thrumming through the trees and into the earth, shimmering in the air. It was a wild and haunting melody with a frantic beat that made feet itch to dance. It was ancient and primal and it called to Emma, as it did to all of them. To the essence of them. 

The dwarves reappeared, on foot this time and rolling barrels of ale which they hoisted onto the table—now cleared of food—and tapped with great ceremony as a roar of approval rose from the crowd. Emma accepted a brimming flagon and a gruff nod from Leroy and drank deeply. Its rich, bitter tang coated her tongue and flowed through her, sank into her, until she could feel the pulse of blood through her veins and the moonlight on her skin.

Ruby pulled Emma and Snow into the centre of the clearing where a dance pit was already forming. The hot tingle in her belly told Emma that Ruby was exerting her sinful influence over them again but this time she didn’t care. She let the music pound through her, let it lighten her, fill her with a loose, wild joy. All the other nights of the year she had to hide what she was, and what Killian was. She had to practice her magic in secret and hex nosy townspeople like Jefferson who tried to threaten her, to blackmail her with exposure. But tonight… tonight she was free.

The dance pit pulsed and grooved and heaved with bodies as lights flickered into existence and began to strobe in the sky. Emma swung between Elsa and Anna as they twirled and dipped each other, and she shimmied in a dirty grind with Tink and the other dark fairies. She laughed as Aurora swooped down and coaxed Belle into a dance, the two of them waving their arms, white gowns flowing, and she laughed harder at Zelena and Regina, determinedly trying to one-up each other with their moves.

Killian watched her, entranced. He loved seeing her like this, his cautious and self-controlled witch just letting herself go, her hair flying in chaos around her head and her hips shaking. She was luminous, breathtaking, and he _needed_ to touch her. He tried to take a step but found that his body moved forward while his feet did not and he went tumbling to the ground, landing hard on his shoulder with his face in a pile of crisp autumn leaves. He groaned, pushing himself up on his elbow and glaring at his feet.

His shoelaces were tied together.

“Smee!” he roared.

A little man appeared, his round face all gormless innocence, his red hat pulled low over his ears. “Sir?” he said, politely attentive.

“What the bloody hell are you playing at?” Killian snarled.

“Nothing, sir,” said Smee. He pulled a pipe from his pocket and clamped it between his teeth, then offered Killian his hand. “Can I help you up?”

_I wouldn’t hurt a fly,_ his expression said, but Killian knew better. From harsh experience. “You absolutely cannot,” he snapped. “And begone. Take your tricks elsewhere.”

Smee backed away from his vengeful glare, straight into a young woman with auburn hair and mournful eyes and water dripping from her every pore and orifice. She had a long, sharp spear in her hand and at her heels an empty man. Smee spun around and bowed to her, apologies tripping off his lips.

“Madam,” he said. “I beg your pardon. Do allow me to—”

“Don’t even think about it,” she replied, raising her spear menacingly. The man behind her stirred in a vaguely threatening way though his eyes remained blank and glassy.

Smee changed his trajectory a second time and headed for where August stood with David and two of the dwarves. Killian made no move to stop him. He untied his laces and retied them in the correct fashion, then accepted Ariel’s drenched hand to help him up.

“Not dancing?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Not really feeling it.” She smiled her sad smile and Killian squeezed her hand. He said nothing, though. There wasn’t much you could say, really, to a woman who’d consumed her own true love’s soul.

“You should go dance with her,” said Ariel, nodding towards the dance pit, and Emma.

“Are you sure, lass? I can stay—”

“No. Thank you. It’s enough for me just to be here. Really, it is. And Eric likes it—” She broke off, glancing at the man. Killian carefully kept the pity from his face. “But please do come to visit me, the next time you’re wandering,” Ariel continued, with an attempt at her old brightness.

“I will.” He squeezed her hand again, then impulsively bent over it with a flourish and a gallant kiss. “Milady,” he said.

She smiled, as he’d hoped she would, and he turned away with a smile of his own, plunging into the dancing throng in search of his wife.

When he found her there was manic colour in her cheeks and her eyes were wide, the green a thin ring around the black pupils.

“Heeeyyy,” she said, pulling him close by his jacket collar and wrapping herself around him for a consuming kiss. She tasted of bitter dwarf ale and her own sweet essence, and something else he couldn’t identify. Something that made his tongue tingle and his head spin.

“What are you on?” he asked her breathlessly when the kiss ended.

“These.” She waved her hand and a pile of deep orange berries appeared on her palm. He frowned.

“What are they?”

“Rowan berries. I mean, sort of. But like, insanely strong ones.” She widened her eyes for emphasis then giggled, swaying on her feet. “Probably crossed with something else. Snow brought them from the mountains. I might use some in my winter tea. Here, try them.”

He took the berries from her hand and popped them in his mouth. They burst on his tongue with a bright, fresh flavour and the spinning sensation intensified. A tingling warmth spread across his skin and he could swear he felt Emma pressed against him with each individual cell of his body. He could taste the music. It was delicious.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. 

“Right?” Emma pulled his mouth to hers again kissed him hard, her fingers tight in his hair. “Reminds me of that night we spent in Norway. Those draligonberries.”

“Aye.”

He curled his arm around her waist and his hand over her ass as they began to sway in time with the pounding rhythm, moving to the music that they heard with their eyes and tasted in their skin, grinding heedlessly, shamelessly against each other, genuinely not caring who might be watching them because they knew no one was.

How long they danced he had no idea, time held no real meaning here and what little attention he was able to focus was all on Emma. They danced and they kissed and they laughed, drifting gradually towards the edge of the clearing until they were tucked against a tree, his hands roaming under her skirt, her mouth on his neck. Through the fading haze left by the berries he could see the others still writhing in a dance that now more closely resembled an orgy: Ruby with her mouth on Elsa’s breast, Anna’s legs wrapped tight around Will, Tink drawing her ragged fingernails roughly down Little John’s neck, Regina with her fangs sunk deep into Robin’s. She sensed Killian’s eyes on her and looked up, her own eyes wild and blood dripping from her crimson lips. She smirked at him and ran her tongue along them.

Robin grabbed her hair and pulled her back down to him, holding her still as he dragged his nose across her cheek and licked the rest of his blood from her lips before kissing her, and Killian realised he’d seen enough.

“Emma. Look at me, love.”

“Hmmmm?” She blinked rapidly, trying to focus. “What is it?”

He brushed a lock of hair back from her face. “Let’s go home.”

“Now? Why?”

“Fuck until sunrise, remember?”

“Mmm, goddess, yes, I want that,” she purred, twining her arms around his neck. “Want you.”

“And I you, but—” he broke off as she kissed him, rocking her hips against him until he could barely think. He pressed her hard against the tree and let himself get lost in her, let the berries still lingering on her tongue carry him away as they kissed, deep and wet and needy.

_Fuck it,_ he thought, _we’ll just fuck here. Everyone else is_.

The sound of David’s hooves on the forest floor jolted him back to awareness of just where _here_ actually was, and he pulled his mouth from Emma’s in time to see his friend galloping into the forest with Snow on his back.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. They needed to go home, to their own bed, and they needed to do it _now_ before things got any further out of hand_._ “Emma, darling—” he began.

“Yeah.” Her eyes were sharper now, and she had also seen Snow and David. “Let’s go home.”

She waved her hand, slashing through reality once again and their portal opened. He shifted as they stepped through it, letting her lean against him, her fingers sunk deep into his fur as they walked home through the moonlit night. They slipped silently past the garden gate and through the door and up the stairs to their bedroom. Killian shifted again, half wishing he could shed his clothes as part of his transformation, but when he moved to unfasten his jeans Emma reached out and stilled his hand.

“Allow me,” she said softly, and removed both their clothes with a snap of her fingers. She smirked at him and he growled, grabbing her roughly around the waist and tumbling them both onto the bed.

“By the goddess how I love you, Emma Swan,” he breathed.

She cupped his face in her hands, tracing his cheekbone with her thumb. “I love you too. Happy Halloween, Killian.”

“Happy Halloween, my love.”

―

“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest… because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”

― Terry Pratchett

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n for anyone wondering what exactly the OUAT characters were meant to be (and MASSIVE thanks to @thisonesatellite for helping me figure that out):  
Regina- vampire  
Robin- were-fox  
Will- were-ferret  
Little John- were-bear  
Anna- dark elf  
Elsa- valkyrie  
Aurora- banshee  
August- Green Man  
Smee- Klabautermann  
Dwarves- Wild Hunt  
Tink- dark fairy  
Ariel- ondine  
Snow-oread  
David- centaur  
Belle- ghost  
Zelena- gorgon  
Ruby- personification of sin


End file.
